The arrival of the holiday season in the U.S. marks the start of the busiest travel period of the year. For millions of Americans, itâ€™s a time of miseryâ€”hours spent waiting out weather delays and missed connections in crumbling domestic airport terminals with oppressive overhead lighting and bad food. But what makes the experience of air travel truly abominable is the government agency ostensibly designed to ease anxieties about getting on planes: the Transportation Security Administration. Far from making travel safer, the U.S.â€™s approach to airport security is putting the lives of even more people at risk.

The TSA was created to replace the patchwork of private security companies that handled airport security in the pre-9/11 era. Its budget quickly ballooned: Since 2002 the number of TSA agents has risen from 16,000 to more than 50,000. Still, to a traumatized public, any amount of overreaction...

you're kidding! having our most private areas touched and squeezed, and going through uncalibrated dna splicing nuke machine doesn't us safer? in today's america, being assaulted is considered being safer.